The product of the differentiation model is "what" we want students to do to show mastery and achievement. Giving students choices about what they produce to show their learning is one of the easiest ways to differentiate your instruction.
Many of the following resources were shared during our session. This is by no means an ehaustive list. As technology tools evolve and teachers continue to use their imagination, the possibilities are endless. Below is a sample quiz to illustrate how to gather data in a new way.
Traditional Assessments – with a 21st Century twist:
GoogleDocs – Using the forms portion of this handy tool is a great, free way to collect assessment data on students. Once you have a Google Docs account, use the “Forms” tool to create a tool. Don’t forget to change the theme to something fun. As students complete the online form, the data will be populated into a spreadsheet that you can use to compute scores if needed. (Example
Online Asssessment Tools: There are multiple free online sites where you can create automated assessments. A couple of my favorites are My Studiyo (see multimedia quiz embedded below), and Quizlet. See Alma’s Delicious Assessment sites.
Student Response Systems - SRS (a.k.a. “clickers”) – There are many companies that now create SRSs. Most come with accompanying software that allows the teacher to easily create assessments. Some of the most popular ones used in Pennsylvania are TurningPoint, eInstruction’s CPS, and Prometheon’s ActiVote.
Assessment Projects:
PowerPoint - This is still a nice way for students to showcase their learning but their projects need to be a synthesis of higher level thinking (problem solving, creativity, etc.) not just a fancy display of rote facts.
Webquests – If these are done well, students work collaboratively to produce a product to show their learning. A great resource is www.webquest.org which contains rsources and a great list of pre-existing webquests. You can always search for them by adding “+webquest” to your topic in search engine.
Books – Creating books is nothing new for students but creating virtual ones that can be published is made simple now with such sites as Mixbook.
Digital storytelling – Everyone loves a good story so what better way for students to share what they’ve learned in a story format? Most computers come loaded with a movie making application (PC – Movie Maker; Mac – iMovie) and there are downloads available such as Photo Story for the PC. There are also online tools where students can create movies right on the site but uploading pictures and video and follow up with narration. Voicethread and Animoto are among the best. Check out the others on Alma’s Decicious site tagged for Digital Storytelling.
The product of the differentiation model is "what" we want students to do to show mastery and achievement. Giving students choices about what they produce to show their learning is one of the easiest ways to differentiate your instruction.
Many of the following resources were shared during our session. This is by no means an ehaustive list. As technology tools evolve and teachers continue to use their imagination, the possibilities are endless. Below is a sample quiz to illustrate how to gather data in a new way.
Traditional Assessments – with a 21st Century twist:
Assessment Projects: